Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni Pie

A baked pie of macaroni, eggs, mushrooms, tomato sauce, and Parmesan cheese in short pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parmesan cheese and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,199 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells apple, fatty. The science ↓

Macaroni Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces and boil in salted water for 15 minutes. Drain the macaroni.

  2. Add an onion with cloves, boiling milk, and Parmesan cheese. Keep boiling gently until cooked.

Assemble the pie

  1. Butter a pie dish. Line the dish with short pastry.

  2. Layer the macaroni, slices of hard-boiled eggs, and cooked mushrooms in the dish. Pour tomato sauce over the layers.

  3. Roll out pastry to cover the pie. Trim edges. Moisten edges. Press them together.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the crust is cooked.

  2. Serve hot with mushroom sauce mixed with lemon juice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parmesan cheese + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  2. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parmesan cheese + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the pie, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and helps thicken the milk mixture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firmness and richness to the filling layers.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidic, savoury flavour to the layers.
Short pastry
Forms a crisp, browned crust that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Keep boiling gently until cooked. Milk scorches and sticks to the pan if it boils too hard, and the macaroni can break apart or cook unevenly. A gentle simmer with regular stirring cooks it through without burning.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, parmesan cheese, egg, mushroom, tomato, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, parmesan cheese, egg, mushroom, tomato, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More macaroni pie recipes

Italian 3 See all 30 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes